By MIKE DUNHAM
Flotsam? or Jetsam?: a found object in Gretchen Patterson's solo show at International Gallery of Contemporary Art.The Rambler was checking out Fairbanks galleries on July 2 (full report at a posting below) and so missed the Anchorage hoopla. On Tuesday, however, I was able to nose around downtown shops where the most excitement — as is often the case — could be found at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D St.

The main space this month is showing “Pop Tops & Messages on Bottles: A New Look at Flotsam & Jetsam.” Gretchen Patterson of Kodiak has collected debris from Alaska beaches, transforming some into found art assemblages, using some to inform paintings, ceramics and prints — including an array of mixed media platters titled “Circles” — and leaving still other objects as they were when she picked them up, asking viewers to consider their origin and the story they tell. Among collected cans is a huge grape beverage container and another cylinder that once contained Double Happiness king size filtered cigarettes. Patterson’s has online video that shows some of her process at gapatterson.us.
Ghost Bottles: from "The Food Project." Photo by Keren Lowell
Elsewhere in the galleries, paintings by Elizabeth Eero Irving and Sandra Klevin seemed unremarkable to me. But “The Food Project” installation by “KEL and Feral D” (presumed to be Keren Lowell and Dawnell Smith) really grabbed my attention. A curtain of snack bags lets you get behind a wall of cereal and other food packages. The inside is lined with ingredient listings and USB codes. Wax, clay and plaster models of food items — and a few real food items, like egg shells (OK, former food items) — stock the interior of the pantry. The wall images pertain to processed food products; the interior images suggest natural foods, fruits, vegetables, milk.

Modern life is also the theme of new raku clay work by Marilyn Miller in her collection titled “Crowded Living” at Aurora Fine Arts, further down 5th Ave. Packed houses and jammed salmon contrast with a piece titled “Empty Nest,” suggesting that you should be careful what you wish for.

The Alaska Native Arts Foundation gallery, 500 W. 6th, continues its main gallery show of paintings by a mother-daughter pair this month. Ruth Biden, of Fairbanks, has a number of folk-style scenes of Inupiat life, full of color and action. But the one I liked best was a portrait of a young mother wearing a flour sack for a scarf. While the style was still folky and outsider, the pose had a certain classical dignity.

Biden’s dauaghter, Andrea Amato, now living in Long Beach, Calif., has a series of photo-realism paintings, mostly of children, drawn from family photos. They too have a certain resonance with images from the grand age of painting. “The Girl in the Blue Atigluk” calls to mind configurations favored by the Dutch masters and 19th century portraitists.

The “commercial” side of the shop, which sells top-grade traditional Native work, has undergone some remodeling. The big drum by Sivalauq — aka Jerry Lieb - remains on the shelf, though his drum at the Anchorage Museum gift shop may have sold, at least it’s not in the case. (Lieb has been a featured artist at Denali Park over the past month.) There was a fine hunting visor/hat adorned with ivory, baleen and feathers. And Percy Avugiak’s “Barack Obama” dance mask.

Fans of Executive Branch memorabilia may also want to check out the presidential nesting dolls at Style of Russia, next to Rumrunners on 4th Ave.